NORTHWEST HIGH SCHOOL FILM FESTIVAL HONORS BHS FILMMAKERS

Students in the Ballard High School Digital Filmmaking Program led the pack of winners at the Northwest High School Film Festival.  Twenty-five high schools were in competition for awards in twelve different production categories.  BHS film students won 15 awards and honors across seven categories.  The awards were presented, and the winners screened, at the Cinerama Theater in downtown Seattle. 

The Northwest High School Film Festival is the largest and longest running festival for high school filmmakers in the Puget Sound region.  It is judged by a panel of industry professionals and college media professors.  In addition to awarding films, they identify promising filmmakers for college scholarships.  This year, BHS film students Coleman Andersen, Duncan Boszko, Rachel Cole, Jaya Flanary, Duncan Gowdy, Leo Pfeifer & Meagen Tajalle all received $5,000 scholarship offers from festival sponsors Cornish College of the Arts and/or The Seattle Film Institute.  The event was organized by the Media Educators Excellence Team (MEET), an inter-district organization of high school media production teachers.  Additional sponsors Adobe, the Cinerama Theatre, Highline Community College, and Vulcan Enterprises helped pave the way for this 17^th annual event.  For more information on the festival, visit www.nwhsff.weebly,org .

All the awarded Ballard productions initially premiered at the Ballard Film Festival (BFF).  This event screens new films by BHS Digital Filmmaking students at the end of every semester.  The next BFF will be on Friday, June 5 at 7 pm in the BHS auditorium.  Tickets are $5 for students and $10 for adults and will be sold at the door.

 

Here are Ballard’s Northwest High School Film Festival winners by category:

AWARDS OF EXCELLENCE

Comedic Narrative

  Jones Ave

  Rachel Cole, Jaya Flanary, Meagen Tajalle

Commercial

  Nerd!

  Bella Anderson, Jonny Cechony, Kaya Coleman-Harrison, Simon Gibson

Documentary

  Audio Input

  Duncan Boszko, Jack O’Neal, Piper Phillips, Sho Schrock

  Clipped Wings

  Coleman Andersen, Duncan Gowdy, Leo Pfeifer

Dramatic Narrative

  Stolen

  Coleman Andersen, Leo Pfeifer

Educational

  A Trip to the Groovies

  Jaya Flanary, Sho Schrock

News/Sports Feature

  Full Effort on the Floor

  Duncan Gowdy, Hawk Ticehurst

Public Service Announcement

  Food Lifeline

  Duncan Gowdy, Zach Green, Leo Pfeifer

HONORABLE MENTIONS 

Comedic Narrative

  Fly Me to the Moon

  Miles Anderson, Jasper Cote, PJ Hase, Gideon Wolfe

  Practicing Parenthood

  Percy Boyle, Avery Davis, Duncan Kastner, Aaron Miller  

Commercial

  Blue Highway Games

  Brian Cropp, Lyric Gonzalez, Sid Johnson  

Documentary

  Delivering the Dream

  Julian Amrine, Lorenzo Rossi, Raven Two Feathers, Josh Vredevoogd

  Raven Rock

  Rachel Cole, Jaya Flanary, Meagen Tajalle

Educational

  Spirit Week Announcement

  Will Erstad, Victoria O’Laughlin, Hawk Ticehurst

Public Service Announcement

  Membership

  Ruby Anderson, PJ Hase, Cameron Miller

ACADEMY NOMINATES BALLARD HIGH SCHOOL FILMMAKERS

The Northwest Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (NATAS) has announced nominees for the High School Awards of Excellence. These awards celebrate the most outstanding student productions from five Northwest states: Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana and Alaska. Productions are nominated by NATAS industry professionals. Students from the Ballard High School Digital Filmmaking Program earned eleven nominations, more than any other school or organization in the five-state region. The winners will be announced on June 6 at the 52nd Annual Regional Emmy Awards ceremony. Ballard’s nominations span six categories, reflecting the diverse skills students learn in the program. These are the nominations by category.

Short Form Fiction:
Fly Me to the Moon by Miles Andersen, Jasper Cote, PJ Hase & Gideon Wolfe

Stolen by Coleman Andersen & Leo Pfeifer


Short Form Non-Fiction:
Audio Input by Duncan Boszko, Jack O’Neal, Piper Phillips & Sho Schrock-Manabe

GeoFORCE: A Journey to Understanding by LeoPfeifer & Raven Two Feathers

Raven Rock by Rachel Cole, Jaya Flanary & Meagen Tajalle


Long Form Non-Fiction:
Clipped Wings by Coleman Andersen, Duncan Gowdy & Leo Pfeifer


Public Service Announcement:
Food Lifeline by Duncan Gowdy, Leo Pfeifer & Zach Green

Membership by Ruby Anderson, PJ Hase & Cameron Miller


Photographer/Editor:
Clipped Wings by Coleman Andersen, Duncan Gowdy & Leo Pfeifer


Writer:
Clipped Wings by Coleman Andersen, Duncan Gowdy & Leo Pfeifer

Stolen by Coleman Andersen & Leo Pfeifer

This makes the ninth year in a row that Ballard High School film students have been nominated by the Academy. Last year they also received 11 nominations, and won the categories of Short Form Fiction and Photographer/Editor.

New productions by students in the BHS Digital Filmmaking Program will be screened at the Ballard Film Festival on Friday, June 5th at 7 pm in the BHS auditorium. Tickets are $5 for students and $10 for adults.

BALLARD FILM STUDENTS WIN BEST DRAMA AT CINEYOUTH

Coleman Andersen and Leo Pfeifer won Best Drama in the junior division at the CineYouth Awards last Saturday night, May 9, at Columbia College Chicago. They won the prize for their short film Stolen.

CineYouth is a project of the Chicago International Film Festival. This annual film showcase celebrates shorts by filmmakers 21 years old and younger from around the world. As winner of the prize for Best Drama, Stolen will screen in the CineYouth "Best of the Fest" at the 51st Chicago International Film Festival next October.

Both Andersen and Pfeifer are third year students in the BHS Digital Filmmaking Program. Andersen, a senior, will be continuing his film education at NYU next fall. Pfeifer, a junior, also plans to study filmmaking in college.

BALLARD FILMS TO SCREEN AT INTERNATIONAL FESTIVALS

Three productions by nine students in the Ballard High School Digital Filmmaking Program have been chosen for screening at international film festivals this May.

Two of the productions will be screened at the Chicago International Film Festival. Raven Rock, by Rachel Cole, Jaya Flanary & Meagen Tajalle is a documentary about a treatment program that pairs survivors of childhood abuse with abused horses for mutual healing. Stolen, by Coleman Andersen and Leo Pfeifer, is a dramatic short about the price of crime. Both films will be screened at the 11th annual CineYouth event, May 7 – 9. CineYouth is an annual youth film showcase celebrating short films made by filmmakers 21 years old and younger from around the world. For more information, visit www.cinemachicago.org/cineyouth/ .

Audio Input, by Duncan Boszko, Jack O’Neal, Piper Phillips & Sho Schrock, is an Official Selection of the Seattle International Film Festival. This short documentary explores the Seattle podcasting scene. It will be screened in the FutureWave Shorts program at SIFF on Monday, May 25. The FutureWave event features the best shorts by filmmakers younger than 18 years from around the world. For more information, visit www.siff.net/festival-2015 .

BALLARD FILMMAKERS WIN AT NFFTY

Students from Ballard High School's Digital Filmmaking Program took two prizes at the National Film Festival for Talented Youth (NFFTY).

Lyric Gonzalez, Bergen Johnson, Leo Pfeifer, Stephanie Shao, and Meagen Tajalle took 1st Prize in the 48-Hour Film Off. This filmmaking competition gave teams of students from various high school production programs 48 hours to produce a short film that included a given line of dialogue (“It’s a state of mind.”), character (a pirate), and theme (see summer). The Ballard team created a mockumentary about an inept movie pirate. Their prize was a $1,500 donation to Ballard's Digital Filmmaking Program. BHS is now the only school ever to win the competition twice. (They received 2nd Prize last year, and won the competition last time in 2010.)

Ballard filmmakers Coleman Andersen, Duncan Gowdy and Leo Pfeifer also won the Audience Award from NFFTY’s “Come as You Are” program of shorts films. Their winning short was Clipped Wings, a documentary about the ban on gays in the Boy Scouts of America. To see Clipped Wings and other productions from the Ballard Digital Filmmaking Program, visit www.vimeo.com/bhsfilmprogram .

The winner of the 48-Hour Film Off will be screened at the Ballard Film Festival on Friday, June 5 at 7 pm in the Ballard High School auditorium.